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Article 5200 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: sasghm@theseus.unx.sas.com (Gary Merrill)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy,sci.philosophy.tech,sci.logic
Subject: Re: Godel's Incompleteness Theorm
Message-ID: <1992Apr22.173139.7504@unx.sas.com>
Date: 22 Apr 92 17:31:39 GMT
References: <12713@tamsun.tamu.edu> 
    <1992Apr21.171016.11389@husc3.harvard.edu> 
    <OZ.92Apr22012511@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> 
    <1992Apr22.090427.11413@husc3.harvard.edu>
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In article <1992Apr22.090427.11413@husc3.harvard.edu>, zeleny@zariski.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
|> In article <OZ.92Apr22012511@ursa.sis.yorku.ca> 
|> oz@ursa.sis.yorku.ca (Ozan Yigit) writes:
|> 
|> MZ:
|> >   It is also predictably content-free, in a collection otherwise ranging from
|> >   ground-breaking to insightful, to informative.  Why anyone would think that
|> >   Wittgenstein's remarks on the significance of G\"odel's Theorem were of any
|> >   interest in the investigation of the latter, is altogether beyond me.

I *knew* when I saw this remark that you were courting trouble.  I have
just been involved in a similar discussion concerning Wittgenstein in
sci.philosophy.meta.  I was going to send in a brief followup saying
something like "Now you are going to get it from the Wittgenstein groupies."
But I thought better of it.  (I probably should have thought better of
this!)

|> It so happens that I read that article, along with the rest of the book,
|> about two years ago.  What struck me at the time was not so much the
|> quality of its research and writing, which was at least serviceable, but
|> the triviality of its subject matter, which was remarkable, even in the
|> light of the general negligibility of Wittgenstein's remarks on the
|> philosophy of mathematics.  In other words, it's not that the author
|> doesn't understand his subject matter, but that his subject has nothing
|> interesting to say about it.

We're dealing not so much with mathematics or philosophy here, but with
a personality cult.  Arguments will rage, but nothing will be settled.
It will be unclear what the dispute is all about.  I once served on the
dissertation board for a Ph.D. candidate who was doing her dissertation
on Wittgenstein's philosophy of mathematics.  At that time I was quite
familiar with the Wittgenstein corpus of course.  Your characterization
strikes me as fairly accurate.  But look:  you just *can't* go around using
words like "negligibility of Wittgenstein's remarks" and "has nothing
interesting to say about it"!  These kinds of remarks about the master
*cannot* be tolerated.  They are evidence of *your* failure to understand.
Give it up and repent while there is still time.
-- 
Gary H. Merrill  [Principal Systems Developer, C Compiler Development]
SAS Institute Inc. / SAS Campus Dr. / Cary, NC  27513 / (919) 677-8000
sasghm@unx.sas.com ... !mcnc!sas!sasghm


